


verse chorus verse

by Rabbitt



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 00:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8348872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabbitt/pseuds/Rabbitt
Summary: Nathan is cold, and wet, and has sand in his shoes. It’s 1983 and he’s eight fucking years old once again, and his neck hurts from where Duke dragged him by the collar out of the surf.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ElegantSoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElegantSoul/gifts).



> For ElegantSoul. Thank you!

Nathan is cold, and wet, and has sand in his shoes. It’s 1983 and he’s eight fucking years old once again, and his neck hurts from where Duke dragged him by the collar out of the surf.

It took them twenty-three minutes to figure out exactly what year it was, just long enough for Nathan to stop coughing up seawater and for Duke to filch a newspaper off a tourist.

They’re on East Beach now, making their way towards the lone structure on the sand. It had taken Nathan a second, when he’d first seen Duke after waking up half in the tide, to even realize anything was wrong - a very old, well-trodden part of his mind had seen him, eight-years-old and with that terrible hair, skinny and short and missing his left incisor, and just gone, _yep, there he is, that’s Duke._ And then, _oh shit._

The second thing Nathan had realized: it's 1983. The Troubles are already in town. He can't feel a thing.

They adapted quickly. It's what they do.

Duke is walking with his hands shoved into his opposite sleeves, skinny arms crossed across his chest, head ducked against the sea breeze. He doesn’t have a coat on. Nathan gnaws on his lower lip and follows him. 

“Man,” he says, as the finally arrive at their destination - the lopsided shed on the edge of the beach, tucked against the hillside. Duke’s treasure chest. It's still odd to hear his own voice come out of his mouth. “This place is a bigger dump than I remember.”

“Oh, stuff it,” Duke says. He whistles a little through his missing tooth. “Besides, it’s exactly as big of a dump as I remember.”

“And why’d we walk all this way?” Nathan says. His legs are a lot shorter than he remembers, too.

“Because,” Duke says. “It’s what’s inside that counts.”

“Pirate treasure?” He guesses, and Duke laughs, the same laugh Nathan remembers. The door creaks on rusted hinges. Nathan follows him in.

The shed is dark and looks like it’s filled with tetanus. The low afternoon light filters in through the warped slats and missing shingles, dust drifting like snow. There are a few stacks of old crates, some battered furniture, junk. A pile of tin cans near the door. In the dim light Nathan can almost make out the sign painted on the far wall. _Something Castle._ Duke picks his way through with practiced ease. He's always been a hoarder.

"This sucks," he calls back as Nathan makes his way gingerly after him. "I never wanted to be this short again."

Amidst the junk is the clutter of Duke's stolen goods: a huddle of G.I. Joes, a deflated basketball, a stack of tattered copies of  _The Hardy Boys,_ Jamie Concannon's old wrist rocket and -

"Is that my pocket knife?" Nathan asks, plucking it off a crate. "You're such an asshole."

"Keep better track of your things," Duke says, tugging a tarp to the side and revealing an unimposing rubbermaid container. "And that's not why we're here. Look, better than pirate booty."

He pries open the lid with both hands, huffing a little.

Nathan peers inside. Pudding pies, Bugles, Snickers, Fruit Roll-Ups and what looks like, to his trained eye, a whole tupperware container full of Mrs. Carruther’s state fair winning whoopie pies.

“Your kingdom,” Nathan says. His stomach rumbles.

“Technically,” Duke says primly. “It’s a duchy.”

They sit inside the shed, backs to the wall. Duke carefully stacks the rusty cans in front of the door, a make shift burglar alarm, and produces an old woven blanket from somewhere that they stretch across both their laps and divvy up the goods onto. They split a bottle of coke between them.

It has been a long time since they’ve done this. Nathan doesn’t think it happened the first go around at eight: eight-years-old had not been a high water mark for their friendship. Before that, and after that, but eight-years-old had been tense and awkward, marked like everything else in Haven by the Troubles, and Simon Crocker’s death, and Lucy.

“Okay,” Duke says finally, after he crumples up the last moonpie wrapper. “We’ve got food in us, a roof over our heads.” He squints up at the battered ceiling. “Mostly, anyway. What now?”

Duke's priorities: food, shelter, save the day. Nathan considers.

“It’s getting dark. The Chief’s probably looking for me already,” he says. “We gotta get back before they send a search party out.”

“What are we gonna do?” Duke asks. “Just pretend like we’re eight-years-old and everything’s fine?”

“We are eight-years-old,” Nathan says. “I mean, as far as anyone knows.”

“You know what I mean,” Duke waves a hand. “That’s weird, Nathan, even for us. What are we going to do? How are we going to fix this?”

“Audrey’s working on it,” Nathan says with utter confidence.

“So, what? We just wait here until she gets it figured out? Just hang out in the 80s and go through it all again? C’mon, Nathan,” he says. “You think I’m just gonna walk down to the gas station and get my old man a pack of Camel Filters and just go back to that house like nothing’s changed? I’m not going back. I can’t go back.”

“You don’t want to see your dad again?” Nathan asks, honestly unsure of the answer. Simon Crocker had been a grade-A asshole but he’d been Duke’s dad, and now he was dead. And on the scale of all things, Nathan knew with certainty Duke had always missed him more than his mom.

He knows, absolutely, that he wants to see  _his_ mom again.

“It’s 1983 and I don’t have enough change in my pocket to pick up a six-pack. I don’t think _he’s_ gonna be happy to see _me_.” Duke looks up from where he’s staring at the dirty floor, catches Nathan’s eye, and looks away. 

His shoulders are drawn, tense and miserable, tiny hands fisted at his sides. Nathan knows his expression without him looking up. Nathan is trying not to look at him like a cop. Like he can’t see the skinny kid with the shirt that doesn’t fit him, who doesn’t have a coat at this time of year. Like he doesn’t know why an eight-year-old would have a secret stash of food. Like he’s just Duke, punk kid and part-time best friend and occasional bully. Trouble-maker. Knows, like he knows Duke, that Duke wouldn't want him, ever, in a million years, to see him like this: eight-years-old and scared.

“Duke - “ he starts, and Duke stands abruptly, jerking the blanket off of him.

“And, I mean, whatever, Nate, forget about that, are we just supposed - are we going to just do it all over again? Go through the motions? Not just my - my dad, but the Troubles, everything that happens.”

“Maybe not,” Nathan says. “Maybe this time....”

“Oh,” Duke says. “Oh, no. We can’t. You know how this works. We’ve been here before, and I mean that literally. We can’t change anything.”

“But now we know,” Nathan argues. “We know what happens. To Lucy. To… to James.”

“We can’t fix it. You know that. That’s how it works. We can’t mess with the timeline.”

“Maybe it’s different this time. Maybe - “

“Maybe what, Nathan? Maybe you can save them? You thought about this: If we save Lucy, we kill Audrey. If Lucy never goes in the Barn, then Audrey never comes out. Never even exists. We can’t have both."

“We can try." Nathan climbs to his feet, faces Duke. Just like always, they're still nearly the same height as each other. "He’s my _son_.”

“I _know!_ ”

Duke drags a hand down his face, the gesture strange on him now. "I know, Nathan. We'll figure it out."

They're just kids, Nathan thinks. And then: but they will. Maybe they can't change it, maybe they can't save Lucy, maybe they can't save James, maybe they can't save Duke. But they'll try. They'll figure something out. It's what they do.

“Come to my place,” he says finally. “My mom will make us dinner.” It’s been twenty-odd years, and he still knows that’s true, with all the certainty of the tide. "Maybe that lasagna you like."

Duke smiles, gap-toothed. Nathan would know that look at any age, in any year, anywhere in the world.

“Okay,” he says. “Food, and a real roof over our heads. That’s the plan for tonight. And what then, Nathan?”

“Then we come up with a plan for tomorrow.”

“And what if Audrey doesn’t fix it, huh?”

“She will," he says. 

Duke studies him. The same eyes Nathan has known for decades, trusting him, always, just this once.

“Yeah,” Duke agrees. “She will.”


End file.
